There was now a fair hope that the Government would be in a position to
solve the Adriatic problem. The Italian delegates in Paris had suggested
that, in the independent buffer State, Rieka should have a separate
municipal status, and that a narrow strip of land should join the buffer
State to Italy. On December 9, a memorandum was signed by the
representatives of Great Britain and America, which was the best
compromise which anyone had yet proposed. The strip was dismissed as
being "counter to every known consideration of geography, economics and
territorial convenience." [Nevertheless this very dangerous expedient of
the strip, after having been thus roundly rejected by the Allies, formed
a part of the Treaty of Rapallo in November 1920--the Yugoslavs had most
generously given way rather than leave this exasperating Adriatic
problem still unsolved.] Rieka with her environment was to be a _corpus
separatum_--and this was the chief point which made the proposals
inacceptable to Italy. That Socialist group which is represented by the
_Avanti_ seemed to be the only one whose attitude was not intransigeant.
The question of Rieka, it argued, was not isolated, but should be
considered as one of the numerous questions of Italian foreign politics.
It laughed at those who every moment cry "Our Fiume," because there are
in the town many people who speak Italian. Other groups of Socialists
had altered very much from the day when the three delegates--Labriola,
Raimundo and Cappa--spoke of the Adriatic at the Congress which Kerensky
summoned to Petrograd. Labriola was considered the most arrogant and
chauvinist of the trio, but not even he demanded Rieka--there was no
question of it at the time. Still less did he dream of Zadar or
[vS]ibenik; what he pleaded for was Triest, Istria and an island.... In
December 1919 some Italian Socialist papers were printing reports on the
economic life of Rieka, which was in a disastrous condition. But the
great majority of Italians were so bent upon securing Rieka that they
did not seem to care if by that time she were dead. And they threw a
little dust into their eyes, if not into the eyes of the Entente, by
declaring that if they did not annex Rieka that unhappy, faithful town
would annex them. The self-appointed Consiglio Nazionale Italiano of
Rieka was, however, at this time less preoccupied with the Madre Patria
than with her own very troublesome affairs; she had no leisure to
organize those patriotic deputations to Rome, which sailed so frequently
across the Adriatic and which, as was revealed by Signor Nitti's organ
_Il Tempo_,[46] were too often composed of speculators who liked to
receive in Italy the sum of 60 centesimi for an unstamped Austrian paper
crown that was barely worth ten. The disillusioned C.N.I. would have
given a good many lire to be rid of d'Annunzio; the citizens were
invited to vote on the following question: "Is it desirable to accept
the proposal of the Italian Government, declared acceptable by the
C.N.I. at its meeting of December 15, which absolves Gabriele d'Annunzio
and his legionaries from their oath to hold Rieka until its annexation
has been decreed and effected?" On December 21, in the Chamber, Signor
Nitti announced that more than half the citizens had voted and that
four-fifths of them were in favour of the suggestion of the C.N.I. But
d'Annunzio, whose adherents by no means facilitated the plebiscite,
proclaimed it null and void. Yet, after all, Italy had likewise, on
every occasion when the Yugoslavs suggested a plebiscite under impartial
control, refused to sanction it.